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Boulder County beekeepers restock after winter losses

Uncle Pete's Bees lost half its hives

By Laura Snider Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
04/22/2012 04:00:00 PM MDT

Updated:
04/22/2012 07:07:53 PM MDT

Have a swarm?

If you find yourself with an unwanted swarm of bees -- which typically cluster in the size of a football -- on your property, you can have the swarm safely removed by calling the Bee Swarm Hotline at 720-443-2331.

Uncle Pete's Bees

Aside from keeping bees, Peter Rountree also sells "personal primping products," including a lip lube, which can be bought at various Boulder locations. A mustache wax is also in the making. For more information on the products, visit unclepetesbees.com.

When you mist a crate of bees with sugar water, it keeps the bees from flying.

This was a critical technique for Peter Rountree and Nick Gold last Thursday when the pair poured tens of thousands of sugar-laden bees from the boxes they were shipped in from California into their new hives on the flanks of Flagstaff Mountain.

Three pounds of the temporarily flightless creatures -- they can lick the sugar off their wings later to regain their hovering skills -- tumbled from a single shipping package into each of the hives, which were left mysteriously vacant over the winter. In fact, Rountree, founder of Uncle Pete's Bees, lost half of his bees over the winter.

"It's pretty brutal," said Gold, Rountree's assistant beekeeper and longtime friend. "That was a really rough day, when we went back and saw all the death in the hives."

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Now that the trees are bursting into bloom and flowers are poking their heads from the earth, it's time for local beekeepers to tabulate their losses -- which some say have increased alarmingly in recent years -- and consider restocking their hives, either with mail-order insects from bee breeders or with swarms of local bees that have been captured after they set up shop in inconvenient locations (think backyard trees, chimneys and playgrounds).

Rountree has been keeping bees for about seven years, since he discovered a wayward swarm (and a huge amount of honey) in the chimney of the home where he also works as a gardener. Since then, Rountree has expanded his operation to include as many as 65 hives scattered throughout the county, many in pasturelands but some in the backyards of bee-friendly city folk.

When Rountree discovered the huge losses his bees sustained over the winter, he suspected that colony collapse disorder -- a phenomenon that's been killing whole hives of bees across the country over the last five years or so -- was to blame, at least in many of the cases. When bees fall prey to the disorder, they typically just disappear, abandoning the hive.

"It's pretty depressing when you come back to your hive after the winter, and they're not dead -- they're just gone," Rountree said. "Some of the hives still had an entire frame of honey."

"Which never happens," Gold added.

The cause of colony collapse disorder is still not entirely known, though many researchers believe it's likely a mix of problems, possibly including climate change, habitat loss and chemicals in the environment. Recently, a pair of studies published in the journal Science strengthen the case that a commonly used class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids -- which become incorporated into the tissue of a plant and the plant's pollen -- play a significant role in bee decline.

The studies found that the pesticides affect the health of queen bees in the hive and that they can cause the bees to become disoriented, making it more difficult for them to return to the hive. But many researchers say the findings can't entirely explain colony collapse disorder.

Regardless, Rountree said he thinks the amount of spraying that goes on in the area is having an impact.

"It's a toxic environment to be a beekeeper in," he said.

Bee losses around the county in recent years have been as high as 80 percent for some beekeepers, but local beekeeper Al Summers, who tended his first hive in 1963, said he thinks the average is closer to 25 percent. And while he says things are not good for bees, he also thinks it's not necessary to be alarmist.

He says he thinks some of the losses can be attributed to beekeeper error, while others are probably related to a variety of factors, including the tendency for farmers to now plant just a few crops, reducing the varieties of available pollen.

"Things aren't great, but no, we don't have to get hysterical," he said.

The local loss of bees has created a higher demand for the services of the "bee guardians," a local group of people who rescue unwanted swarms and deliver them to beekeepers in need of some healthy bees.

Anyone with a swarm can call the Bee Swarm Hotline, 720-443-2331, and on-call bee experts will come by to remove the insects.

Karen Sadenwater, who helps organize the hotline, said the group rescues at least 65 swarms a season, with the peak number of calls coming in May. Sadenwater said starting a backyard hive with a local swarm has advantages over buying bees from out of the area.

"We like the diversity -- they've been out in the wild," she said.

Also, a local swarm of bees may be better acclimated to the local weather patterns, including Colorado winters.

The trick to capturing a swarm, Sadenwater said, is to get the queen, who is typically in the center of the mass of bees, into a box.

"They're going to go wherever she goes," she said. "If you get her in the box, then they're all going to magically go in there and follow her."

The list of people who want a swarm rescued by the bee guardians has increased in recent years, partly because people are losing more bees and partly because more hobbyists are taking up beekeeping, said Sadenwater, who tends bees and teaches beekeeping classes. (For more information, visit backyardhive.com.)

"Hobby beekeeping has increased tremendously," she said. "People are more aware, and they want to help do something."

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